Culture can revive T&T’s economy

by

#meta[ag-author]

20200522222332

20200523

The world was spun up­side down and just as con­struc­tion work­ers were in the process of lay­ing down the foun­da­tion of the High­landers Steel Or­ches­tra’s new pan the­atre, when Covid-19 struck a hate­ful chord, tun­ing out a clo­sure of what was con­sid­ered non-es­sen­tial busi­ness in­clud­ing con­struc­tion.

Man­ag­er of High­landers Robert Her­nan­dez and his team wait­ed years for ne­go­ti­a­tions to be com­plet­ed with the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) to ac­quire the land, of which, a 99-year lease was even­tu­al­ly re­alised in 2018.

With keys hand­ed over to the con­trac­tor in Jan­u­ary 2020, works prompt­ly be­gan and a six-month end time was un­der­stood; that was be­fore the shut-down in March.

It is any­one’s guess now when the new com­ple­tion of the site—the cor­ner of Williams Street and East­ern Main Road, Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille—will be, but pan must be here to stay and not the pan­dem­ic, as the scope of the art­form can help re­vive T&T’s econ­o­my as sim­i­lar to Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL).

At this stage, they are “es­sen­tial” to each oth­er. High­landers need prod­ucts from TCL to af­ford com­ple­tion of their mul­ti-pur­pose pan the­atre and TCL needs con­struc­tion projects to help them restart their rev­enue streams.

“We ex­pect to play a key role in the re­vival of the T&T econ­o­my…Con­struc­tion re­quires ce­ment…and like the Unit­ed King­dom, us­ing con­struc­tion to try and kick-start their econ­o­my as they move from Covid-19 lock­down to re­sume eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,”

And so, T&T needs pan to help “kick­start the econ­o­my,” which can hap­pen in sev­er­al ways phys­i­cal­ly and vir­tu­al­ly.

Two of the count­less good and re­ward­ing things that have emerged out of the so­cial/phys­i­cal-dis­tanc­ing, and work-from -home and stay-at-home prac­tice are coun­tries in far-flung prox­im­i­ties linked and cre­at­ed friend­ships they couldn’t have imag­ined from a phys­i­cal plateau, and even the most in­tim­i­dat­ed or unin­spired per­son to tech­nol­o­gy-use, has grasped the great­ness, full ad­van­tage and, skills that ben­e­fit out­comes from the im­pen­e­tra­ble use of tech­nol­o­gy.

Many parts of the world are yet to know of pan or get close to the re­al mas­ters of pan—from T&T, the mec­ca. Some link­ages were formed so it will prove wise to keep the mo­men­tum up rolling out the new nor­mal of phys­i­cal and vir­tu­al pan life, and hone some best-prac­tices to es­tab­lish well-de­signed pan pro­grammes and ap­pro­pri­ate on­line pay­ment meth­ods.